


The Things We Write

by HamThePan



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abuse Mentions, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art, College, College Parties, Drawing, Eliza's a total Mom Friend, F/F, First Dates, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I know nothing about college lmao, Light Angst, Movie Nights, how do ppl explain the whole 'soulmate' thing to children, i don't know what to tag, most of the characters are only mentioned, nb Dolley Payne, soulmate au's are so weird like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8458948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamThePan/pseuds/HamThePan
Summary: (Soulmate au- when you draw/write on your body it shows up on your soulmate's body as well, and vice versa)Growing up, Maria spent most of her time at home or at her shoddy school, she was labelled a nerd and a loner because she kept her grades up and didn't interact with people. Her soulmate's drawings kept her going.//Growing up, Eliza spent some of her years in an orphanage, and then she was adopted by the Schuyler's, she was sent to a good school, but spent most of her time drawing- on herself.//Two girls so vastly different were tied together by fate.





	

When Maria was young, her family didn't have much. Her mom was a high school graduate who worked at a convenience store all day every day, and her step-dad had never finished college and he worked a low paying office job. She didn't see her parents much growing up.

Maria also had siblings, an older half brother named Col, and two older sisters named Sarah and Susanna, she wasn't very close to her siblings, they would hang out with each other, but she was the youngest out of all of them, so they often ignored her and spend time with each other or their friends. She was alone a lot.

When she wasn't doing and redoing homework, Maria would read a lot, and sometimes write quotes on her arms (or legs, if she ran out of space), she knew that, like everyone, she had a soulmate out there somewhere-kids were taught that at a young age so they wouldn't panic if random things showed up on them-and Maria hoped that her's would see the quotes, and maybe respond. She wasn't even sure if she even had a soulmate because she never got any sort of response or saw any drawings.

Being alone a lot meant Maria only had her thoughts for company, she didn't have many friends, no one wanted to interact with the girl who wore the same hand-me-downs every day (even though quite a few of the kids in her grade were in the same situation), usually it didn't bother her, but sometimes it did, and she would cry. Maybe it was a stupid thing to be upset about, but her family couldn't or wouldn't hang out with her, and she didn't have friends. There wasn't much else she could do for herself.

The drawings started showing up when she was around twelve. It had been a boring day in school-like always-and she had been doodling aimlessly while pretending to listen to some history lesson, when she noticed a line appearing on her right arm, it was green, and probably ink from a pen. Maria had stopped her doodling to instead stare intently at her arm, the line slowly grew into what Maria could assume was a vine of sorts, complete with leaves and flowers of multiple colors, once whoever was drawing it-her soulmate-was done and the vine stopped growing, Maria simply wrote 'pretty' under it in black ink. And then she got called on by the teacher for not paying attention in class.

From that day on Maria would always watch as things appeared on her body, usually the drawings showed up on her arms or legs and were almost always plants, flowers, vines, trees, and the occasional underwater scene, there were also occasionally drawings of animals, mainly dragons or gryphons. Sometimes they'd even get colored in, Maria practically lived to watch the drawings appear, and after each one was finished she'd write a compliment underneath it.

When Maria turned fifteen, she met a mister James Reynolds, and-though she knew he wasn't her soulmate-she really did love him. He was twenty years old, making him five years older than she was, but she didn't care. He was really nice, and always listened to her, and she loved him. It was only later in their "relationship" did things go wrong.

James became more controlling, constantly wanting to know who she was texting or calling and he would get upset if she told him she was going out with one of the few friends she had made in that time, and later on he started hitting her. Maria didn't know any better, she went with it.

No one noticed the bruises, by then her siblings had gone off to the community college or moved away, her parents were always working, and no one at school really looked at her. The few friends she had never asked about them, and if they did she just shrugged it off and told them she was clumsy- it wasn't a big deal.

With bruises decorating her arms, she found it hard to write or doodle on herself any more, and her soulmate seemed to notice. For the first time, they spoke to her, writing a simple question, "are you okay?" But Maria didn't respond.

The drawings became less frequent the next few weeks, and she missed them, they were the one thing that kept her going.

When she was seventeen Maria managed to break up with James, her friends asked her why, "you always seemed so happy," they would say. She shrugged, it wouldn't matter to tell them, not when it was over. She still saw him around, though, and always made a point to walked home with someone she knew.

Her soulmate had stopped drawing, and writing, nothing showed up anymore, Maria couldn't help but wonder if she had upset them somehow, she remembered the question they had asked all those weeks ago, and for the first time she grabbed a pen and wrote on her arm, "I'm better now."

The response was there by the next morning, "I'm glad." Written in cursive.

She applied for a college scholarship that year, it wasn't a great place, but considering her low college fund, it was all she and her family could afford. She remembered crying when she got accepted, it was probably one of the happiest days of her life.

Maria remembered talking to her soulmate that night, it was the night before she actually left, and as odd as it may have been, in hopes that her soulmate would see, she was writing about it excitedly, mainly on her legs because writing on her arms was hard and she didn't want to run out of room, but it surprised her when she got a response. "What college are you going to?"

Without really thinking about it, Maria wrote back with the name of the college.

The response that followed was a bunch of exclamation points, and then, "me too!!" written on her upper thigh, just below her knee.

Surprised, Maria wrote underneath, "we should meet!"

After a few moments she got another response under her own. "Yeah! I gotta go to sleep though, night!" It was followed by a heart, Maria went to bed grinning widely that night.

The next morning, she saw that the responses from her soulmate were almost entirely faded, as if they'd been scrubbed away, she had washed off her own writing so her parents (who were there to see her off) wouldn't ask questions, and then Maria went downstairs.

She remembered crying when she left, because, sure her little section of New York city was rather terrible, but it was still the only place she had really known, and she was going to miss it. But she also remembered being excited, she was finally leaving her home and going out into the world, she was nervous and didn't know what to expect, but she knew it was going to be great.

Another thing Maria remembered was that once she arrived, she checked her arms (and legs) for any sort of message from her soulmate, only to find nothing and end up carrying her two bags to her dorm room in disappointment.

Her roommate was nice, her name was Theo and she was a business major. Theo and Maria got along fairly well and hung out together in the evenings, Theo never asked why Maria was constantly looking at her arms, and Maria never asked why Theo would refresh what appeared to be a ring silhouette on her ring finger every few days.

After her first three weeks there, Maria was finally settling into the odd schedule, and on the first day of her fourth week, she found a message from her soulmate on her right wrist, it was a short question and simply read, "lunch at noon in the west courtyard?" To which Maria replied, "see you there!"

As cheesy as it sounds (as Maria would later say when retelling this story), she knew she'd remember that day forever. It had been slightly overcast, the clouds were threatening to break open and release a storm, thunder would occasionally grumble from miles away, but it wouldn't rain.

Sitting through classes had been torture, and she had been more fidgety than usual, at some point though, she remembered watching as a galaxy appeared in a small circle across her arm, a dark blue background with gold stars (colored with glittery ink for extra effect) speckled across it.

Maria was practically the first one out of the last class, and even stopped at the bathroom to fix up her hair and makeup- she wasn't trying to be vain, she was just excited. Maria was practically shaking when she finally reached the designated courtyard, it was a quiet place, a few people were scattered around the area and there were tall trees around. She didn't know who she was looking for, so Maria sat at the base of a tree by the group, and waited.

Despite finding it hard to focus on the words in her excitement, Maria started reading a book she had brought with her, and jumped in surprise when she heard someone from the nearby group shouting, "excuse me miss, could you show me your arm?"

Confused, Maria set her book down and slowly held up her arm, the right one on which was the galaxy drawing, she jumped again when someone quite literally squealed, only to see why. On the girl's arm was the same exact drawing.

The people in the group all started to say things, Maria wasn't sure what, but it had sounded vaguely like congratulations, but the girl didn't care, she was practically sprinting over to Maria, and-despite her wide grin-looked like she was going to cry ("Hopefully," Maria remembered thinking, "they're tears of joy.")

Everything that happened after that was almost a blur. Despite having never met before, and despite having hardly even spoken before, the two embraced like they had known each other for years, and her soulmate finally introduced herself.

Her name was Elizabeth Schuyler ("Although," she had noted, "Everyone calls me Eliza.") And she was majoring in education.

Maria introduced herself, and then Eliza introduced her to the group, their names were Alexander Hamilton, Hercules Mulligan, Gilbert Du Motier (he went by Lafayette- it was apparently apart of his "full name", at the time, Maria had no idea what that meant), and John Laurens.

And from that day on, Maria and Eliza spent a lot of time together, both hanging out alone, or with the group.

A few months later over winter break, Maria had met Eliza's sisters (Peggy looked eerily similar to her and was pretty cool, Angelica was downright scary), and her parents (although both of the Schuyler parents seemed friendly, they were intimidating).

That day had changed Maria's life, and it was definitely for the better.

|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
In their first year together, Maria had learned some interesting things about Eliza.

Like that she was good at baking, so long as someone was with her, reminded her of ingredients, and reminded her to check the oven. Eliza was not so great at cooking, and when they stayed in to eat dinner (which was all the time, they didn't have money to go out), Maria made dinner, and Eliza made dessert. it was a good system and worked well for the both of them.

Another thing Maria learned about her (though she already knew part of it), was that she was a really great artist, but preferred coloring instead of actually drawing. For Eliza's birthday, Maria bought her two of the adult coloring book things, and a pack of colored pencils.

She also learned that Eliza didn't sleep too well at night, and instead took cat naps at random hours of the day or night. Especially on the weekends. Sometimes when Maria spent the night at Eliza's or Eliza stayed at her dorm, they would wake up, eat breakfast, and Eliza would fall asleep on the couch.

Eliza was also quite content with calm, easy silences. A lot of times, when it was just Maria and Eliza at one of their dorms, they'd would have a radio on for background noise, sit at opposite ends of the couch, and read or write or draw or (in Eliza's case) color. Those times were very peaceful and Maria looked forward to them.

Once, Peggy warned Maria that she would end up hiding a stray animal in her dorm at some point. Maria hadn't thought it was true until Eliza showed up one evening with a ginger tabby cat, they named him Sock, got him all the supplies he'd need, and by the end of the semester, he sort of became a campus legend. Mainly because Peggy, Maria, John, and Theo started an Instagram account to post pictures of Sock being cute- which was very, very frequently.  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
They always went overboard for Halloween, always.

It was an unspoken rule that the group had to start decorating their dorms at least a month before Halloween, no one knew who exactly in the group decided to start decorating early for Halloween, but everyone just, picked up after them. (It was Alex and Lafayette's fault.)

Usually there was a Halloween party on campus, and when they accidentally crashed one in their first year (Alex got drunk and decided to fight Jefferson- it didn't end well) they ended up organizing and throwing their own Halloween party the next few years after that, surprisingly, people would show up.

The first time they threw the party (it was still in their first year, John called it a "post Halloween bash"- which everyone agreed sounded really cheesy) Maria and Eliza left early, having decided to leave before chaos inevitably broke loose. That first year, after they had left, Lafayette got so drunk he reverted back to french and no one (except for Alex (and Jefferson-who was there for some reason)) could understand him, Hercules tried to sew a tear in his costume and tried to fix it, but only made it worse and got himself injured, and John called his dad while he was drunk.

(There were also rumors that a drunk Alex and Jefferson made out, but no one addressed those.)

They didn't have alcohol at their Halloween parties after that.  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
Sometimes on rainy nights (or days) they'd either go on walks (Eliza's idea) or stay in and drink hot chocolate (Maria's idea), usually they would invite their friends over to whoever's dorm they were at and they'd hang out and watch bad movies and try to apply memes to it.

Usually the "rainy movie nights"-as they were dubbed-ended with makeovers, pillow fights (usually initiated by Peggy), and late night runs to the nearest convenience store for extra junk food.

One of the best rainy movie nights ended when everyone fell asleep while they watched High School Musical (Alexander's idea), and started again when Eliza tried to make pancakes for breakfast, and John started a food fight with said pancakes.

Maria, Eliza, and Theo ditched the others and went to get coffee (and muffins for breakfast since the pancakes had been ruined) while the guys cleaned up the mess they had made of Eliza's dorm.

|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
Maria was a hard worker, and, despite how much she hated it, spent a lot of time at the campus coffee shop, where she had gotten a job. She would often text Eliza during her breaks just to complain about the customers who decided it was her fault they were out of certain things at certain times, and sometimes she'd show up to Eliza's dorm unprompted to just hang out and calm down, and complain about the patrons more.

It was kind of funny, because sometimes Eliza wasn't actually at her dorm, and Dolley would end up answering the door and hanging out with Maria for a bit, the two bonded, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. Dolley was a bit of a troublemaker and Maria was often bored enough to go along with their schemes. Which was how they ended up getting kicked out from Toys r Us twice and a Wal-mart within two months.

The Toys r Us was their favorite story to tell, on their off day, Maria and Dolley had gone to one that was surprisingly close to the campus and had been hanging out inside when Dolley had gotten the bright idea to take one of the toy cars off the display shelf and drive it around. Maria had filmed it (why- no one was entirely sure) and continued filming when an employee came over and politely asked Dolley to leave.

When they told the group about their excursion, Eliza sighed, Alexander and John wanted to join them if they planned on doing it again, and Burr-Maria couldn't quite remember why he was at Alex's dorm that day-looked entirely exasperated.

A few weeks later, Maria and Dolley were back at that same Toys r Us, except this time they were actually planning on buying something, and Eliza had gone with them, Alexander was there too, it was a bit of a party. They were looking for a birthday present for one of Dolley's younger siblings, and had ended up looking at some sort of figurine-she couldn't remember what it had been-but she did remember that it said 'try me- I bounce!', so Dolley had dropped it.

And it broke.

Explaining what had happened did not go entirely well, and they got kicked out a second time.

Now, the time they had gotten kicked out of Wal-mart was Dolley and Maria's favourite story to tell, and involved Alex, John, Eliza, Maria, Peggy, Dolley, a shopping cart, and Titanic. They all tried reenacting that one scene from Titanic (separately- of course), but things ended up getting a bit out of hand, John, who had been pushing the cart at the time, had moved it too fast and sent Dolley and Peggy (who had been in the cart) both into Eliza (who had been playing music on her phone) and into a display. The group helped clean up as best they could before they were politely escorted from the premise by security. It had been a wild day.

What made the day even better was later telling the story to Theo, Aaron, Lafayette, and Hercules. All of them except for Lafayette had varying looks of disappointment and vague amusement with matching comments. Lafayette, however, wanted to know why they hadn't invited him.  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
It was their second year of college

Maria and Eliza were at Eliza's dorm, and if anyone were to walk in, they'd be confronted by a rather odd scene.

The room was quiet save for the music Eliza was playing, Maria wasn't too sure what it was, but it sounded nice. Maria was laying in the floor on her stomach with her shirt pulled up to her shoulders, reading, while Eliza sat cross-legged next to her with a pack of markers and a pack of wet-wipes, and she was drawing on Maria's back.

"You know, I still don't understand why you're doing this." Maria said, breaking the comfortable silence that surrounded them.

Eliza shrugged, although considering her position, Maria couldn't see. "It'll look cool, and stop moving so much or I'm gonna mess up."

"I doubt you could mess up." Maria responded.

"This is a very complex work, it'd be easy to mess up."

"I'm sure it's going to turn out great, but it's a shame I won't be able to see it.." Maria sighed dramatically, making Eliza grumble.

"I'll show you, don't worry. And again, stop moving so much."

"Right, right." Maria settled back down to start reading again, but found it hard to concentrate on reading when Eliza started quietly singing along with the next song that came on.

Another hour passed, Eliza was still doodling away on Maria's back, though Maria was pretty sure she was just coloring things now. After a few extra minutes, Eliza sat back and announced that she was done, Maria was half asleep, Eliza shook her awake.

"What?" Maria mumbled, rolling onto her side to look up at Eliza.

"Like I said," Eliza repeated. "I'm done."

"Cool, cool, can I see?"

"The real question," Eliza started. "Is do you want to see it on me, or in a picture?"

Maria smiled. "Well, I doubt a picture could do your artistic talent any justice."

For the next few days after that, Maria and Eliza had matching """"tattoos"""" of a fae dragon on their backs. Despite it looking amazing, there was the slight problem of where they were, and that people wouldn't be able to see the radical dragon """"tattoos""".  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
It was still their second year of college, this time a bit later in the year, just before summer break.

Eliza was going back to Albany to visit with her family, and Maria was heading back home to visit her family, or at least her parents. They hadn't heard from Sarah or Col in a few years, and had pretty much given up on contacting them, figuring they had ended up in jail or something somewhere.

The last few days they had together were rather hectic, as most of the group was travelling back to visit their families, they were trying to spend as much time as they could together, which ended up with the group pulling all nighters to watch movies or getting kicked out of Walmart (there was a fun story behind that, involving a shopping cart, John, Alex, and the music from Titanic), but aside from that (and a few other mistakes- like how they got kicked out of Toys r Us), the last week they had together before summer break was great, Maria kept a lot of the pictures she took.

Due to a slight falling out she had with her family, Maria ended up returning to the campus a lot earlier than expected, and spent a lot of time holed up in her dorm waiting for summer break to end so she'd have people to talk to, she knew it was selfish, but there wasn't much for her to do aside from read, and she had already read through a good chunk of the campus library's book collection, so there wasn't too much for her to do.

Of course she texted Eliza, but it wasn't as fun or nice as actually spending time with her, or any of their friends. Though she hated to admit it, Maria had gotten so used to being surrounded by people that she hated being alone.

And it wasn't like she couldn't go out and talk to other people, she just wasn't the most social person, and there weren't many other people around.

So of course it was quite the surprise when Maria got a text from Eliza asking her to come and help her unpack, because due to """complications""" Eliza had ended up coming back earlier than expected. Peggy later informed Maria (as if she hadn't already guessed) that Eliza had also missed her, and, In Peggy's words, "was being really gross about it".

For the rest of the week, they binge watched Disney movie and drank a lot of Starbucks Coffee, it was probably Maria's favourite week, and became a tradition of sorts for the rest of their summer breaks.  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
In their third year, they got engaged.

It was for April fools' day, the night before they had stayed up until midnight to figure out just how they were going to prank their friends, when they somehow got on the topic of marriage and what their dream weddings would be. That in itself was an odd topic to be on, but they ended up staying awake far later than they had intended just discussing their futures and what they wanted to do in life, by the end of the night (around four am) they had come up with their prank.

The next day, Maria and Eliza went out to a nearby department store and bought cheap, matching gold bands to wear. Then they went to the group and announced their engagement, there were a lot of congratulations and (somehow) someone brought out alcohol, and there was a party. Peggy even called Angelica to tell her what had happened, it was a very interesting (and fun) day.

By the end of it, they mutually agreed that they couldn't actually explain that they weren't actually engaged and break everybody's hearts, so they kept it up. A few days later Maria accidentally let it slip they weren't actually engaged, Peggy tried to fight her (and almost called Angelica, Eliza had to intervene).  
|°•°•°•°•°•°•°|  
In their fourth year, they graduated.

Along with that, they actually got _engaged_ , Eliza proposed and everything, Peggy filmed it and Angelica had helped her pick out the ring, it was a simple gold band with small rubies embedded in it.

And it was perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> H hi guys. I wanna note somethings in this chapter that I felt needed clarifying (even if they don't, I'm still doing it for me)
> 
> -I tried keeping this like? historically accurate as I could manage in a Modern AU, but for Reasons(tm) i had to change some crap, i.e Maria and James breaking up?? bc Reasons.  
> -The school is and will remain unnamed because King's College doesn't exist and Columbia University is an ivy league school with a 6% acceptance rate (I looked it up, yikes)  
> -everyone is/might be incredibly ooc and for that I am sorry.  
> -I worked on this for months, had my sister beta read it multiple times, and yet I'm still not sure if I got all the spelling errors.  
> -even though it's two chapters its?? technically a one shot just told from,, different perspectives.'  
> -chapter two will be up eventually  
> -Theo's ring thing (hah rhymes) is her n burr in case anyone was wondering.  
> -honestly these notes were gonna be serious but like. It's me. I can't do anything seriously.  
> -also screw proper writing timeskips make my life s o m u c h e a s i e r  
> -pls comment and/or leave kudos if you like this!! I worked on this for literal months (since the end of september) and would really love to hear feedback and stuff!!  
> -you can message me on my tumblr @HamThePan
> 
> Thanks for reading all!! Take care!!


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